Carroll Ballard has had to work very hard in order to create the illusion for brief moments that Nutcracker: The Motion Picture (not to be confused with nutcracker: the kitchen implement) is something more or other than it is. And even so he has had to sit back for long stretches, puffing slightly, and let it go ahead and be exactly and unmistakably what it is: namely the Tchaikovsky ballet as designed by children's illustrator Maurice Sendak and as danced by the Pacific Northwest Ballet (and as first performed by them on stage in 1983). It looks, from a certain angle, to be a natural and inevitable and long-overdue sort of project. A perennial classic (in the accepted phrase) as a concert and theater piece, why should it not be one as a movie, too? Well, all right, since the question has been asked: "why not" is because it remains here essentially a theater piece, and all of Ballard's hard work can't make it into something else. But Ballard himself, it would finally be uncharitable not to admit, comes through this strategic crucible with as much honor and dignity as any man can who has had both hands tied behind his back and one leg affixed to an iron ball. (1986) — Duncan Shepherd
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